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Sunday, April 29, 2012

April 2012 Reports

For those just arrived, I do a computation of the ANNUAL performance every Sunday, by subtracting this evening's meter reading from the same one, exactly a year ago. I add the weekly report to this blog diary entry, every week.

29 April 2012: The last week has been horrible, unremitting heavy cloud and regular rain - temperatures below 10ºC, virtually December weather, and statistically far colder than March - 237 degree days instead of 213 for four week periods in each month.
Newswise, the UK has been following the Leveson enquiry, revealing more the dirty dealings of the Murdoch empire, with both James and Rupert up for questioning. In so doing, it revealed the behaviour of Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, and this lively story is still on-going. In the same week it was revealed that David Cameron's fortune comes from offshore banking. Korea tried to test a missile, and invited journalists to view it, and there was worldwide satisfaction when the thing failed within a minute, ha-ha. Britain started the week with a hosepipe ban and official drought, and ended it with extensive floods in some places, and no need for hosepipes! London had its Marathon at the start of the week, and is also gearing up for a Mayoral election next week. At the end of the week, we heard of the British charity worker Khalil Dale, who was executed by Taliban kidnappers in Quetta. That rings a bell as my mother used to live in Quetta in the 30s, and it made me wonder how much of the Quetta remains - not much because she experienced the devastating earthquake of May 1935. A Rubber chicken called Camilla took a flight in space. Chelsea beat Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final, with Fernando Torres scoring the final goal, and he went on to score a hat-trick at the weekend. What about the meters?

4,855 kWh for the House and 2,858 kWh GSHP, not surprising after the very cold week with evening temperatures always in single figures.

PV has dropped to 3,340 kWh. This is to be expected with continuous rain.

Sunbox is working, and I have got some figures now, but am using a new meter starting from Zero, so it will take time to recompile a figure for them. The Tubes have done almost nothing in this rain.

Ground temperature is 10.9ºC. No sun for the whole week and temperatures comparable with November-December have reduced the ground temperature, not surprisingly.

22 April 2012: I have been back for nearly a week, and have some readings now, and have got the Sunbox working again, although not the energy meter with it. I need to phone DMS for the wiring diagram - I don't know where it got to, or if I ever got one. In the wider world, the world has been gripped by the Anders Breitvik trial, but one wonders why people like Abu Qatada don't get equal rights to world publicity to report their vile beliefs. The Norwegians are far too fair and balanced.
A wanted man in Afghanistan turned himself in for the reward money, hahaha. Ugly moron. The Space shuttle flew its last flight, piggy backing over Washington, before being sent to a space museum.
It was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic on the 15th, and Liverpool celebrated with an extraordinary festival of giant puppets, and a couple of cruise ships full of relatives and Titanic-fans went across the Atlantic to visit the exact spot. The French election preliminary stage occurred at the end of the week, with Sarkozy losing to Hollande (hooray) and Vettel won the controversially held Grand Prix in Bahrain. What about the meters?

4,792 kWh for the House and 2,794 kWh GSHP, very poor figures, but fully expected after the very cold week with evening temperatures always in single figures.

PV has dropped to 3,386 kWh. But the rain has been good for the garden and for the underground reservoirs.

Sunbox is working, but I have no figures for them yet. I have had the Tubes installed, and they are working, but only about 2 kWh per day, so far.

Ground temperature is 11.3ºC. It has been a rainy overcast week with short sunny spells, and I am relieved it is above 11.

15 April 2012: I didn't do any meter readings because I was in New York for the week. I left the Sunbox disconnected because my repair wasn't quite concluded and I didn't want anything going wrong during the week. While I was there, the Trayvon Martin killing was a big story. Although it happened many days earlier, the story was how an internet campaign had finally forced the authorities to take it seriously, listen to the sound tracks, do some analysis and idict Zimmerman. Phew!

8 April 2012: Another week, and I won't have time to discuss the world news, but I have a note of the week's events and will write them up eventually. There was the election in Myanmar (Burma), the Korean University shooting (in California), the winter weather sweeping through Europe, the Amazon tax scam revelations. I have no figures for the Tubes yet as the meter is still the wrong way round. For the house, here are the figures..

4,719 kWh for the House and 2,689 kWh GSHP, higher than a week ago.

PV is high, at 3,400 kWh. But the Dull week has reduced our annual figures by 50 kWh.

Sunbox still out of action. I have had the Tubes installed, and they are working, but no energy figures to report yet.

Ground temperature is 11.1ºC. It has been an overcast week, and yes, the tubes have put some energy down, but not much yet.

1 April 2012: The main news for the Peveril Solar house is the turning off of the Sunbox system until the leak is fixed, and the installation of the Kingspan Varisol tubes. What has happened elsewhere?

Things I shall cover: Cruddas and Tory corruption, NewsCorp and OnDigital, Balloon on pylon, Petrol panic, Shard topping, Galloway in Bradford, Las Vegas plane, Cruiseship fire, Aung San Syu Kyi election. Meanwhile, I must work on a Powerpoint for a CIBSE conference later this month.

How's about the Peveril Solar house?

4,629 kWh for the House and 2,626 kWh GSHP, both similar to a week ago.

PV is up to a record high level, at 3,450 kWh. No complaints there!

Sunbox was out of action, until the scaffolding is moved round to the south and the leak if fixed, I won't have more readings from that. I have had the Tubes installed, and they are working, but the Energy Meter is mis-installed, and needs to be re-positioned for it to show what the tubes are earning. Also, a heat exchanger would make better use of the ability of the tubes to capture energy. At the moment, on a warm day, the hottest that the tubes get to is 17ºC before they are cooled again by the pumping liquid.

Ground temperature is 11.5ºC. It has been a sunny week, and yes, the tubes have put some energy down, but not much yet. The GSHP has had a very low workload while this summer weather continues.

15 June 2014: It has been a dry June so far with negligible rain. I'm glad to have 300litres of water storage for the garden. House ...

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Peveril Solar House

Welcome to Charging the Earth!

PEVERIL SOLAR is the first house in the UK to be entirely solar heated all year round! It is Carbon Net-Zero. It is an 'Active House' balancing inputs and outputs. PV generation and heating system consumption are in favourable balance using concepts of energy storage. Others claiming houses to be the first date from 2013 (and are unbuilt); this house exists and was carbon zero since 2011.

The name 'Charging' refers to 'storing energy underground': we have custom-built solar collectors, Surya Sunboxes, with ETFE front surfaces, to pump solar heat deep down into the earth. The building's heat pump gets all of this back in Realtime (immediately), Diurnially (later during the evenings) or Interseasonally (in Winter, months after the Summer).

Thus, we are augmenting the heatpump by storing long term heat in the summer, and we are defrosting the ground in winter-spring conditions, supplying solar energy directly to the heat pump, through its ground loop.

The five-way pentangle of Grid, Borehole, Heat pump, PV roof and Sunboxes have made the house Carbon Zero (for metered consumption). It's working, and we will continue to record data, to maintain that efficiency, and write it up in this website through to next year and beyond.

During theAutumn of 2012, we built a small house extension that is ultra insulated, with a higher energy gain than it loses.

Note, that we still have a net import of power from the Grid, because we still need power for lighting, cooking and appliances. But for the building emissions (as opposed to lifestyle emissions), we have achieved a credit balance of the regulated quantities, as recorded by meters.

The web-log follows the project from this general idea in Aug. 2009 to a technology of Surya Sunboxes, which seem to be effective - reducing energy costs of the house. Some of the Tabs will help you to get background and theory. You can click below to 'Follow Blog' to get email notifications - or email me. Please add Comments to the blog entries. If you find items in the Glossary that need explaining better, please ask. Thankyou!

Publications

Equipment sponsor

Kingspan, for Varisol Tubes

Equipment Sponsor

MG Renewables

Equipment sponsor

Ice Energy Heat Pumps

Equipment Sponsor

Holscot, for ETFE panels, re-fronting the Sunbox

About the Author...

David Nicholson-Cole is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Nottingham, with 35 years experience of architectural teaching and practice, which has included special interests in construction, building information modelling, tall building design and renewable energy technologies.

Finally, thanks to my deceased aunt, Margaret Cringle (1915-2008) whose legacy paid for most of the cost of this project - as one who was always turning lights out to save electricity, she would be very pleased!